Carter, 91, made the announcement near the beginning of the Sunday School class he was teaching at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, a close friend and fellow church member said.

“He said he got a scan this week and the cancer was gone,” Jill Stuckey said by phone from Maranatha, where Carter was still in the midst of teaching to about 350 people, many of them visitors. “The church, everybody here, just erupted in applause.”